Today, Andy and I took turns waiting at home to sign for a letter from the department of the Arizona Division of Developmental Disabilities that handles applications for speech devices regarding their ultimate decision on the recommendations of the AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) evaluator. For those of you new to this blog, I will post links to the history of the ongoing series of denials, appeals, etc. for this current device at the end of this post. For now, be aware our son is considered non-verbal by speech therapy standards, currently being unable to make several consonant sounds, struggling to connect two sounds together, and having less than ten recognizable word approximations. He has already been functionally using an AAC device since 2015 (the list of witnesses for this outside of our own word that we have within the community and on our son’s therapy team is more than sufficient at this point), but his current device has been malfunctioning for approximately a year now.
This is what we received:
I am going to keep my comments at this time to the realm of verifiable fact, because this is a matter that may be resolved in the courts at this point. Our son’s medical conditions, level of functioning (verbally and otherwise), are heavily documented. We adopted our son from Foster Care here in the great state of Arizona when he was 9 months old, so every aspect of his developmental and medical path has been highly documented. While the truth matters to me a great deal, I don’t expect those of you who don’t know me to believe that without seeing some things that are verifiable. I will only be putting up portions of the documents that both DDD and I have copies of in regards to this matter. I certainly have the full reports (some of these pictures have appeared in previous posts already, but are reposted here for the benefit of those new to our blog) and DDD does also, having been provided them via e-mail by either myself or the provider who completed the assessment. Please note last names have been redacted wherever necessary to protect privacy.
From Dr. D, who is a sharp as a tack developmental pediatrician working in the metro area:
From Dr. Shane Hunt, who completed comprehensive educational and evaluative testing (including IQ) that was requested by representatives of the Division in violation of their own policies during our son’s 6 year re-determination for eligibility (please note again, DDD was given the full report and findings):
From Tony’s Geneticist, who is quite frankly, awesome:
From the Speech Evaluation done and submitted with the current speech device application:
A small portion of the evaluation submitted by the AAC evaluator:
I’m not even sure I need to say more.
As those of you who are either a close personal friend or a member of our therapy team already know, we have been in communication with the ACDL about our son’s situation. I reached out to them after seeing the January notices that were sent by the ACDL and the Arizona Center for Law and the Public Interest to Interim Director Christ of the Department of Economic Security (which oversees DDD).
Coincidentally, I received this from the ACDL a couple of days ago, and I believe it is important information to know for others who may be engaged in a similar effort to obtain medically necessary assistive speech technology for a disabled loved one in the state of Arizona:
Certainly, the ACLPI will be hearing from me. And, they probably won’t be the only ones.
For those of you who are new to our blog, you can read a little bit more about our current ongoing AAC device path here and here.
